No children with their vapid, empty gazes, no marker crud beneath my fingernails, no hauling 40 lbs. of books from high school to middle school, no asking for the pass, no huffing-and-puffing because I denied the pass, no inane chatter with the librarians (whose company I really enjoy, but really dear, do I need to hear about what your grandson ate for dinner last night?), no dropped pencils, pens, books, lunches, watches, glasses, corn chips, soda bottles, marbles (honestly…marbles? Didn’t kids stop playing with those 40 years ago?) papers, stacks of papers, stacks of papers followed by the stack of books upon which they were so precariously placed, no begging “Please, please, puh-leeze don’t make me write on the board!”, no wads of paper thrown to the wastebasket from across the room, no mindless giggling about God-only-knows-WHAT-the-hell-there-is-to-laugh-about when one is diagramming sentences (poorly, bless 'em), no tattling, telling OR ratting, no coercing or arm-twisting just to get a kid to sit down long enough to write their name on the line at the top-right corner of the quiz (That’s why I put that line there…y’know, the line next to the word ‘Name’. No, it’s cool, just as long as I know whose is whose. Way to think outside the box, Maurice.) only to have another pop up to sharpen a pencil or to ask me what’s my middle name and why did my parents pick such a funny name? Is that Irish? Where’s Ireland? Just sit down, please…no, in YOUR seat, thank you.
Ah, three cheers for the snow and ice, and three more for Middle Tennessee; where half-an-inch of snow and a little ill-preparedness means I get to stay home and grade papers and maybe even flesh out my lesson plans. Thank you, winter.